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Comment by anonym29 | Hacker News Reader

It's a real shame these institutions have been rendered ideologically indistinguishable from the activists who've been telling us constantly the world will end if we don't get rid of all oil in the next 5 years for the last decade and a half. "Boy who cried wolf" resulting from activist alarmism has done immense and possibly irreparable damage to the credibility of the scientific community.

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It will actually take a little while to tell if they were, in fact, crying wolf.

There is a lag between when carbon is released and when the effects of it peak. If we did stop all carbon emissions today, the effects of prior emissions would play out over the next 30ish years.

We’re injecting unprecedented amounts of thermal energy into planet-scale systems, and it is hard to predict second and third order effects.

I have kids/I really hope they were crying wolf.

Nobody really ever said the world will end in 5 years.

The message has basically always been "the climate is fragile and we're adding energy to that system, which will cause change in the climate"

The whole "the world will end in 5 years" is a really lame reaction that dismisses the messaging on purpose. It's what people use when they don't want to say, "I don't care" because saying that makes people feel/look bad or because they are "anti-hippie" or whatever phrase we wanna use.

For over 50 years we've been hearing dire predictions about climate catastrophes, none of which have come true.

https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-poca...

>Nobody really ever said the world will end in 5 years.

You mean besides the most recognizable / well known climate activist on earth?

"A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years."

- Greta Thunberg (June 21st, 2018)

https://web.archive.org/web/20230307215203/https://twitter.c...

I believe the OP was talking about scientists, not social media influencers.

Also the statement was not “we will all be dead in 5 years.” It was “this could wipe out humanity if we don’t make huge changes in 5 years.” Time frame was not stated.

I think it’s hyperbole, and that the realistic take is “if we continue to make this problem worse the cost will compound until it becomes an existential risk to civilization.” That’s not extinction, but it’s very bad.

It’s a bit like running up credit card bills, except that we don’t even know the interest rate.

The influencer was citing a scientist, and the hyperbole (delivered seriously) is the root cause of the "boy who cried wolf" effect that caused large swaths of the population to now dismiss basically all climate science, including the valid, rational, non-hyperbolic findings.

It's also not just influencers, it's scientists and the leadership of scientific institutions directly, too.

"If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late."

- Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [August 19th, 2008]

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-economist-debat...

"We cannot now afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world."

- James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies [January 17th, 2009]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/obama-cl...

Valid counterpoint. There's an incredibly widespread belief in those circles that if you don't crank up the hyperbole nobody will pay any attention at all.

Unfortunately there's some truth to it, especially in the mass media age. We have a President who became the most powerful person on Earth by more or less eating his own boogers, because it got attention, and "any attention is good attention as long as they spell your name right." It works, unfortunately.

But it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you crank up the hyperbole you discredit yourself. If you don't, you're ignored. Rational measured opinions get no press and have no "virality."

Some of the AI doomers are, I think, genuinely kind of nuts (the Rationalists), but I suspect that some of them (especially actual scientists like Hinton) are doing this. They think if they don't make bombastic claims nobody will listen.

Unfortunately it means everyone will dismiss the entire issue when, in a few years, AI has not destroyed humanity.

You're purposefully misinterpreting what is being said.

They're saying that unless we stop our behavior in the next X years then it will be too late. We will have added so much to the system that it will "run away". This will eventually lead to the environment being inhospitable to our ways of life. Most dates ive read are 2075 or so. That's not 5 years.

They are not saying that life will end in 5 years.

This is a purposeful misinterpretation so that the reader doesn't have to listen. It allows the reader to scoff and go about their excess.

This interpretation was pushed, very purposefully, to accomplish apathy and complacency in the general public.

But back on tbe point, nobody really ever said "humanity is OVER in 5 years if we don't stop". What has consistently been said is "we are changing our environment and it will eventually change in ways that won't support our life" with various dates, usually 50+ years, given.

Places that used to hit 32C max are now hitting 37C consistently. How is that not catastrophic? It is literally unbearable to be outside.

Much of Texas routinely hits 40-43°C highs for months at a time every summer, and has for decades. Las Vegas and Phoenix are even worse. You're right, it is unbearable to be outside. The solution is AC and not going outside in the summer, or choosing to move and live somewhere cooler.

There is no such thing as a right to a comfortable outdoor temperature in the geographic environment of your choice.

This was true even before we started burning coal, it's true now, and it will still be true even after we hit net zero carbon emissions, and even after all of the CO2 dissipates.

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